1. Doesn't surprise me.

I buy absurd numbers of CDs and DVDs - don't like downloads other than iTunes for the nano pod for taking on holiday whatever. All of the stuff is bought online and I don't use shopping centres at all - just edge of town supermarkets with their own free car parks.

If councils want to turn parking into a tragedy then fuck'em - they are accelerating the demise of their shopping centres.

3. I don't use edge of town shopping centres if I can avoid it.....

.....and I've never brought a CD from a supermarket in my life. If nothing else their selection of CD's I find to be pretty poor.

My concern is more about town centres. For me record shops used to be one of the best things in town centres, then most of them shut, leaving only HMV on most high street's. Now that's gone as well. It's no suprise and if I'm honest HMV did deteriorate quite badly towards the end.

You have to ask what's going to replace HMV? We've got enough pound shops, bookies and charity shops as it is and quite frankly there needs to be decent attractive stores in town centres, otherwise people will shop elsewhere. I don't want to see the death of the town centre.

I suppose we will just have to support independent record stores instead! And not many of them are left either.

4. I meant

supermarkets on the edge just for food - not for CDs etc. Apart from that they're stand alone units not centres - Sainsburys , Asdas and Tescos all have their own remote sites here in Watford as does Waitrose up the road in St Albans.

From the days when I only bought jazz and swing Moles has shut and Rays moved off to Foyles - the local shops only had poor selections of that anyway. Since I started buying Old Time Traditional American 10 years ago there is even less of that in conventional "record shops" like HMV.

Great search engine here on this site if you ever want to find stuff by track name whatever: http://www.jpc.de/ just click on english.

5. Couldn't agree more

A few years ago, we were showing an American friend around Newcastle and he couldn't believe that it still had such a vibrant and varied "Downtown". Now, the Bullingdon Boys and their acolytes are taking the Northern cities in the direction of Detroit and Cleveland.

6. There's a number of factors at play here.

There's the rise of online shopping, which played a major part in the demise of the record store.

In some cases, bad planning decisions by local authorities haven't helped.

There's also competition from out of town shopping centres like Bluewater in Kent and Lakeside in Essex, and retail parks.

And the current trend for places like Poundstretcher and bookies which are not appealing in my opinion. Certainly not as appealing as HMV was in it's prime.

The current economic climate isn't helping, but even if the economy were reasonably healthy the trend away from the High St would very likely still be there. Whatever else they are guilty of, Cameron & Clegg are not to blame for HMV's demise.